The Pirate Review - Science Fiction Book Club

Sorry, SFBC, you lost me

If you've read some of my other articles, you know that my husband and I have an addiction to books—we can't pass by a bookstore without the money being sucked right out of our pockets and into a purchase. We tend to read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, and we keep and re-read the books we most enjoy, so we try to buy hardbound books over paperbacks. It shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone that I was a member of the Science Fiction Book Club from 1993 to 2004—but no more. The company has lost my business forever over a problem which could have been fixed so easily, but which was not. More on that later.

Overview
If you've signed up with a book club, you probably know the drill: you choose the first few books for free (or a very low price such as $1) and pay when the books arrive. Over the next year or two, you are required to buy a certain number of books at standard prices. After that, you're free to leave or stay with the club as you choose. I stayed for eleven years. Some reasons why:

Choices
SFBC offers a wide variety of titles, from epic fantasy to hard SF to space opera, with a good selection of other SF/fantasy-related items such as movies on video and graphic novels. They offer titles that are difficult or impossible to find anywhere else—past offerings included a hardback printing of the modern fantasy classic Little, Big by John Crowley, the Johnny Maxwell series by Terry Pratchett, and Ingathering, the only complete collection of Zenna Henderson's People stories in a single volume. On occasion SFBC also offers its members special deluxe editions of books, such as a beautiful leatherbound edition of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles.

Convenience
Membership means being a little more likely to withstand a bookstore's siren song in favor of the latest Universe, the seasonal printing of all the books SFBC currently offers. I didn't even have to wait around for the monthly mailing to come; I could place an order through their phone line or website and get the books I'd ordered within a week or two.

I also appreciated the SFBC's good graces when it came to responding to mailings. When you've first started, you can respond to Featured Selection cards through the mail or online, making sure they don't send you an item you don't want. Also, once you have fulfilled your obligation to the club, you can call or write and ask to be switched over to mailings with no automatic shipments—no need to keep track of the response cards ever again.

Price
Not only does the SFBC offer a wide selection of titles, but their prices for hardbound books are almost in line with the cost of first-run paperbacks at places like Barnes & Noble. On occasion they'll offer selected titles at rock-bottom prices; I picked up some wonderful book deals this way.

But as with any service, the SFBC isn't perfect. Here are a few problems with the club:

S&H charges
The shipping charges for your books can be a killer. Although it costs less per book if you buy a quantity of titles at once, the folks at SFBC have an annoying habit of splitting up one large order into several separate shipments, pinging you for additional shipping charges with each package. This bugged me to no end. I would rather wait for my order to be filled in one fell swoop than be nickeled-and-dimed to death with separate shipments.

Quality
Yes, they're all hardcover books, but not all hardcovers are created equal. Although the quality of printing and binding improved since I first joined and some special titles, such as the Bradbury, are simply beautiful, there are still some books in the book club that are merely acceptably bound. You can also expect a few dust jackets with artwork from the ridiculous to the outright ugly—the cover of Isaac Asimov's Robot novels features a photo of a "robot" that looks like a product of an unspeakable ménage à trois between a vacuum cleaner, a Bendix washer and a 386 motherboard. It would have been better to ditch the dust jacket altogether.

Ruthless cross-marketing
This tactic was what caused me to give up the SFBC for good. As a subsidiary of the Doubleday Book Club, SFBC offers a LOT of Doubleday-related crap in its monthly mailings. I learned to deal with this, but on several occasions I made it clear to Doubleday that the SFBC was the only book club I had any interest in joining. Privacy is important to me, and I've had my address removed from direct marketing lists and opt out whenever possible. I didn't want any additional Doubleday advertisements in the mail. Unfortunately, Doubleday refused to honor my wishes in this matter, continuing to send separate mailings filled with offers I didn't want, even after I had sent a letter expressly telling them to stop. As the company seemed determined to ignore me, I cancelled my subscription.

In the end, of course, true value is in the eye of the beholder. If you read a large volume of books and a preponderance of them are science fiction or fantasy titles—and if you don't mind being ruthlessly marketed to by its parent company—the SFBC might be the right choice for you. You can pick up a membership form from a current member or one of several frequent mass mailings, or sign up at http://www.sfbc.com/.